52nd Frankfurt Book Fair - cultural event and trading centre, forum for innovations and umbrella for specialised information options

Frankfurt (PROTEXT) - When the 52nd Frankfurt Book Fair opens tomorrow, Tuesday, with Poland as this year's Guest of Honour, speakers will include the foreign ministers of Poland and Germany, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Joschka Fischer, as well as the two Polish Nobel prize for literature laureates Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szybmorska. The Frankfurt Book Fair (18 - 23 October) is attended by 6,887 publishing companies from 107 countries. Among the titles they bring, more than a quarter of exhibitors now include electronic publications alongside books. The new information technologies and their many effects on the publishing industry are also the subject of numerous debates and events here at the world's largest book fair. With the headline "New Books, New Shops, New Jobs", a series of events at the "Electronic Media Centre" also attempts to sum up the effects of this trend: - e-books make it possible to sell book directs on the Internet, opening up a new content sales channel with a promising future; several publishing corporations are already active on this sector. - Online bookselling was already a focus of attention in 1999 and in the current year, it has not only grown in volume but also been able to diversity into the widest variety of product catagories. - New professions such as online editor, media developer and IT assistant are becoming important within publishing and are profiled here at the Frankfurt Book Fair. But the traditional book trade is also finding that globalisation and specialisation in the product range are the most important trends. Specialist information, the sciences and children's books are among the growth areas. All these special areas of interest are offered a broad cultural forum at the Frankfurt Book Fair, as well as their most important international market place. Content innovations are also given an airing at specialist events and discussion sessions. The internationalisation of the publishing world is reflected in a dynamic expansion in rights and licence trading - the key business at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In support of rights trading, the Frankfurt Book Fair announces the development of a dedicated Internet platform. All data on exhibitors and on 18,000 titles on exhibit are already available at www.buchmesse.de (German) or www.frankfurt-book- fair.com (English version) - as well as the Calendar of Events and the latest news. Contact: Frankfurt Book Fair Press Dept 16 October 2000 Tel.: +49 69 2102-217 Fax: +49 69 2102-227 press@book-fair.com Visit the Frankfurt Book Fair on the Internet: www.frankfurt-book-fair.com Subscribers please note that material bearing the slug "PROTEXT" is not part of CTK's news service and is not to be published under the "CTK" slug. Protext is a commercial service providing distribution of press releases from clients, who are identified in the text of Protext reports and who bear full responsibility for their contents. PROTEXT